Search

Lisa tapped her fingers against the too-white tile. The click-click-click of her fingernails sounded like the tick of a clock counting down. Or like the revolving barrel of a gun.

Thirty seconds.

Click. Click. Click.

Twenty-seven seconds and a bullet slides into a chamber.

Click…click…click.

Time was up. She pulled the white stick from the mug and angled it to face the bright overhead lights. Two pink lines. Pregnant. Expecting. Knocked up. Bun in the oven. Screwed. The test fell to the ground, and Lisa collapsed into herself. Her head pressed against her shaking knees.

When she heard the click of the camera, she raised her head and sighed. “Was that good? You got the shot?”

“Yeah, great take Lisa.”

“Good, I’m heading out then.” She grabbed her coat and purse, rushing out of the studio.

Of course, it was just pretend. She was an actress, and this was her job. She put on whatever face they wanted: happy, flirtatious, contemplative, disdainful, depressed. Today’s script called for anxious…and pregnant. She always delivered even when sometimes the script hit a little too close to home.

When she came home, she pulled a wrinkled picture out of the drawer. Sometimes, the script almost asked too much of her. She touched the black and white ultrasound photo, outlined the tiny body of what should have been a beautiful baby girl.

Nicely emotional. The title took away some of the impact for me, though; as soon as I read it, I guessed that the beginning was only acting when I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. Still makes me want to find out more–and give Lisa a hug, poor woman. ^_^

Our stories

Archives

blog stats

if you like this, you might like

top posts & pages

contributors

copyright notice

This website content is copyright of the individual authors of the stories.
Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited.
You may not, except with the author's express written permission, distribute or commercially exploit the content. Nor may you transmit it or store it in any other website or other form of electronic retrieval system.

what’s this all about?

We're creating characters. I'll post a list of prompts in advance. Our writers write stories based on the prompts and publish to the site when they're done. Simple!

Show us your character. We'll show you ours. :)
To find out how you can add your story, click the Participate button above.